Install Windows 8 On Your Mac With Boot Camp [Video How-To]

With the release of Windows 8 for developers, many people have been trying to install Microsoft’s new operating system in a virtual machine with little success. Fortunately, Apple’s own Boot Camp application not only runs Windows 8, it runs it far better than most virtual machines will. In this video, I’ll show you how to set up Windows 8 on your Mac with Boot Camp.

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“Fortunately, Apple’s own Boot Camp application not only runs Windows 8, it runs it far better than most virtual machines will.”

That’s because it’s not a virtual machine. When using Boot Camp Windows runs directly on the hardware, it is not virtualized.

Larry Thomson

In spite of your assertion to the contrary, I was successful in getting Win8 to run in a parllels VM right out of the gate. Parallels V7, iMac mid 2011 OSX10.6.8

Appears to work just fine, although the UI is somewhat strange.

Anthony M Perez

I have to agree – my roomie and I got ours working fine w/o ANY incident. I installed it under Oracle’s VirtualBox on my iMac (9,1 / 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, OS X 10.7.1) and he got his running on his HP using VirtualBox as well. What’s so hard about it? Can someone cite where this “unsuccessful” data is coming from?

cliqsquad

virtual Box works just fine… Need to up the res and no issues

Robert Pruitt

Thanks for the video. It had me excited. I spent the last hour or so watching the Win 8 developer preview videos after having the interest sparked by your video. I found Win 8 features slightly boring, but I think a step in the right direction for Microsoft. If I had only a Windows box to play on with no OSX exposure I would be pretty excited about the new features. For now my Macbook Pro 2011 model will continue to dual-boot Win 7 for my gaming partition.

Michael Steeber

I heard tons of complaining on Twitter, if that counts. I also had an unsuccessful attempt with both Virtual Box and VMWare.

JMattP

I can’t tell you how much it bothers me when people talk about Boot Camp like it’s a virtual machine. It’s a tool that partitions the computer’s hard drive and automatically restarts it to boot from the installation disc/USB. After that, there are drivers, and that’s it. I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels it’s necessary to correct people on this.

JMattP

The driver package setup won’t run on Windows 8 even if you choose Windows 7 compatibility. I tried doing it manually on my Air and it said most things were “up to date”. The OS kept freezing though. Bummer.

Ryan Warner

Runs fine in Fusion 4 on Lion with 2 GB RAM allocated to it. Except Unity doesn’t work. At all. Almost breaks it (really hard to get out of).

patelpranay1

Wow lovely article of your. I have written about it in my new blog as well. But it would not as much capable as windows 7. Wat u say?

011Bojan

I am not sure I want to poison my MAC with Windows…

Albert

how is he functionality of windows 8 with Bootcamp? Can you use IE9 and does it work well? If so that is a good way to finally have IE on Mac. I don’t fully understand the the developers copy requirements and limitations; does Microsoft limit the time it is a “free” copy i.e. an expiration date?

oakdesk23

Worked fine for me in VMware. I did one clean install in a vm, and then used VMware to boot my boot camp partition and upgraded Windows 7 (that was a disaster, but it has nothing to do with it being VMware.)

rohitkapur

I have it installed on my macbook pro 13 inch with BootCamp. The support software DOES work with multitouch scrolling, but its very limited. Also, it doesn’t do horizontal scrolling on the main tile screen which is a pain.

James T

Have it installed on my late’09 iMac through Parallels 6

prof_peabody

Several really smart people figured out how to do this and posted the how-to on websites around the net. How is it appropriate for some kid (seriously, he looks to be about fifteen from the picture), to post this video how-to without giving any credit to the people who actually figured this stuff out?

It just makes this site look amateurish and underhanded IMO.

Gaansan

Who need’s Windows in an open space.

Jonjjuan1

he’s saying better than most virtual machines not that bootcamp is a virtual machine. get a life douchebag. ” it bothers me people talk about bootcamp as a virtual machine.” that comment bothers me get a life and worry about something else dork

sylvain abba

Just installed on my Macbook. Very smooth, like it. When I view a video, there’s no sound. Any help here!!!

ElWeroOjiverde

I know this is a dumb question, but, is there a way to do the opposite? I want to install Mac OSX in a PC with Windows 7.

Geoff

Wow. I can’t believe it took THIS long before we got the inevitable “Why would I ever want to do this?” post. Sheesh.

Yes you can use IE9 because its Windows via Bootcamp!?!? You’re running Windows…

GrimWit

Michael is a pretty smart guy, IMO, no matter what his age. There are a lot of very smart young people out there and to dismiss and say that he basically plagiarized this based on his looks is pretty unfair. Also, he is either employed by Cult of Mac or is a regular contributor as he has authored many good articles.

Max

Not really. The problem with running OSX on a PC is that Apple have included stuff in the OS so that it will ONLY run on Apple hardware. So while Mac users might say “Mac can run OSX and Windows, but PC can’t run OSX” the truth is that it CAN but Apple don’t let you.

A way around this is to use Hackintosh which Is just a modified version of OSX that will run on PC. So do some googling about that, or I’ve heard you can buy an “FEX” chip or something which tricks OSX into thinking your PC is a Mac…so google that too.

Hope that helps :)

Michael Steeber

sound drivers are improperly installed.

Michael Steeber

Truth is, there is no single person to give credit to, as it would be impossible to trace the how-to back to a single source. The process for this is nearly identical to that of a Windows 7 installation, and it was easy enough for me to figure out the rest of the process without the aid of the other websites.

I’m 16 BTW :)

shherr

google “lifehacker hackintosh” and a bunch of info/tutorials come up.

Dilbert A

Agreed.

Dilbert A

Thanks. I’ll probably skip it then.

BrianVoll

Installing Windows is pretty common knowledge to anyone who knows even a little bit about computers. 1. Pop disk in2. Click Next a few times3. Done

Granted, with boot camp, there are a few more steps, but the bootcamp assistant will completely walk you through it.

Emma Bierbaum

When I start in Windows 8, I can’t get to setup.exe and install the drivers to get internet and stuff because it doesn’t recognize my disc drive. Is there a way of fixing this? I searched and no one else seems to be having this problem.

Cruz Carlo

I wanna know how to partition 3 so like i have windows 7, windows 8 and OSX.. if u guy can give me a link that would be great. thanks :D

ElWeroOjiverde

Thank you both, I’ll start doing a little research!

Steven Chaffer

Ya, thats a bit classLESS Prof. I gave you more credit that you deserve lately.

Gokul Swamy

help, my audio wont come out of my speakers, what should i do

EmilyWolf

,. cool ,I just got a $827.89 iPad2 for only $103.37 and my mom got a $1499.99 HTV for only $251.92, they are both coming tomorrow. I would be an idiot to ever pay full retail prîces at places like Walmart or Bestbuy. I sold a 37″ HTV to my boss for $600 that I only paid $78.24 for.I use ÉgoWin.com

You poor things :-(. Just leave alone your junky Macs and have some NORMAL systems.

kevin9794

Poor thing. Just stop trolling and get a Mac ;)

Kevinblue_10

i have MBP 13″ with mac os x Lion, when i try to install windows 8 at bootcamp, it restart and turn the screen into black and it say: “windows failed to start. a recent hardware or software change might be the cause.”i need help guys. thanks!

Mrperson0

Windows 8 sucks compared to Windows 7.

Brian Joergens

Same here…. bootcamp with win 8 dev preview… Had to override the settings to keep the screen from always being dim and have yet to hear a sound despite the audio volume meter detecting audio but not playing it over the iMac speakers. <help></help>

Garnath

Considering it’s only in a pre-beta stage, I don’t see why it would be any better at this point.

SidPandey

Hi, Thanks for sharing this. I am new to Apple world and have recently bought MacBook Air. I tried installing Windows 8DP as per your video. I downloaded 32 bit iso and created usb as bootable device. Partition was created and machine restarted. I was expecting that the Windows 8 installation will start but to my surprise I got,”No bootable device found…”. I erased everything and started from scratch again still the result is same… Not sure whats wrong…it’s me who is missing something or something more needs to be done… Any help/insight will be highly appreciated..

Greg Myers

Does this delete your current Mac partition? (Meaning will I lose my files in the Mac OS?)

joshuatcraig

Ok, maybe I’m the only one other than @573ee21660e5a7adf3b4f221ea0b4d69:disqus that understands what the author of this article was trying to say, that Boot Camp will run Windows 8 better than running it under a virtualization program.

That is what I understood by this comment that he made and I quote “Fortunately, Apple’s own Boot Camp application not only runs Windows 8, it runs it far better than most virtual machines will.”

And the author wasn’t saying you couldn’t run Windows 8 with a virtualization program, he was merely pointing out that Boot Camp supports it. I really wish people would read first and then comment. And I wish people wouldn’t take comments in an article as an attack as if it’s not possible to use a virtual program. People need to calm down and read first before they comment.

Awesome article, great info, to the author keep it up. And in my humble opinion virtualization sucks because it shares resources with the native machine. I don’t want to boot into OS X and then have to share my native resources with a virtual OS. Boot Camp is the way to go.

That is all, to the nay-sayers go and suck it!

Hatham Al-Shabibi

I don’t have any blank DVDs, but I do have an external hard drive. I copied the ISO image to the drive, and tried to install and Boot Camp doesn’t give the option. Is there a way to install from the drive?

c.t

I see what you did there.

BearTime

If windows 8 crashes, can it corrupt my personal files, such as word documents I have in my Mac directories?